Football

Around the PAC-10 (Week 5)

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Washington coach Steve Sarkisian won in the Coliseum, where he used to be an offensive coordinator for USC. (Image via Wikipedia)

Washington pulled off an exciting upset in Los Angeles to down the Trojans and leave USC out of the AP Top 25 this week, but the favorites in the conference’s other three games (Oregon, UCLA, and Oregon State) all came away from the weekend with victories. We saw all of this–literally all of it–coming in our preseason predictions, but we went back on everything safe the UCLA win over Washington State in our article from this past Thursday. Moral of the story: Thoreau was wrong.

Other lessons from the weekend: Oregon looks like a legitimate threat to knock Ohio State out of the #2 spot nationally and contend for a berth in the BCS National Championship Game. Oregon State is now back on track, and USC is finally paying for its early-season sloppiness. But is Washington for real, and can Arizona State pull off big wins, rather than just impressively close loses?

After taking the NIT crown, Stanford returns most of its top talent and has 2 top-100 recruits, Rosco Allen and Grant Verhoven, coming to The Farm. The team has not had this much talent since at least 2008. But how much impact ...